


This is What Would Be Considered a Morally Grey Area

by HashtagLEH



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anything Except Temptation, Attempt at Humor, Aziraphale Can't Resist Crowley, Aziraphale and Crowley Are Wonderful Parents, Child Neglect, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Crowley Can't Resist Puppy Eyes, Dad Aziraphale (Good Omens), Dad Crowley (Good Omens), Gardener Aziraphale (Good Omens), Godparents Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), He Can Resist Anything, He knows they love each other, Humor, JUST KISS ALREADY, Kidnapping, Matchmaker Warlock, Nanny Ashtoreth (Good Omens) - Freeform, Nanny Crowley (Good Omens), Not Canon Compliant, Other, Protective Crowley, Softie Crowley (Good Omens), Surprise Adoption Really, The Dowlings Are Terrible Parents, and kidnappers, it came out more serious than I intended, jobs as parents and as kidnappers, look Warlock literally begged for them to kidnap him, semi-seriously anyway, they take their jobs very seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-28 06:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20059684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HashtagLEH/pseuds/HashtagLEH
Summary: “Will you please, kidnap me?” Warlock requested in the same tone of voice he had asked to go to the zoo the day before.“Of course not, Warlock,” Aziraphale said immediately. “You are very safe here. The security is flawless.”“Don’tlieto him!” Crowley hissed, clutching the boy closer to him as though it would make him forget the words the angel had just spoken. “Do you want the Prince of This World to remember you as aliarat the time of the Apocalypse?”“Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t even care!” Warlock went on insistently, paying no heed to his nanny’s nonsense words. They made no sense, anyway.“Of course they would, Warlock,” Crowley said immediately. “After they noticed you were gone, anyway.”





	This is What Would Be Considered a Morally Grey Area

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [human childcare for the occult (and ethereal)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19757332) by [suzukiblu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/suzukiblu/pseuds/suzukiblu). 

> This idea struck me after reading the wonderful fic listed above, so it's kind of a what-if to that one. I half expected Crowley and Aziraphale to actually kidnap Warlock, and I was a little disappointed when they didn't, so I decided to write my own version. Hope you like it!

Crowley knew that the brunch was important.

Or, at least he assumed that it was. It was what he tried convincing to himself, so that he didn’t have to think about the fact that Harriet Dowling was not one he would count as a good mother. Neither of the Dowlings were fit to be parents, to be completely truthful about it. And when he let himself think about those things, he wondered if maybe they had only had a child because it was the Expected thing to do.

And Crowley liked Warlock. He was curious, sometimes a brat – but then all kids were. It meant he was doing his job right, to see the boy acting normal like that.

But what Warlock needed were parents who actually cared about him, and wanted to be around him and play with him. He needed to _know _that his parents loved him.

He told himself it was because if Warlock didn’t feel loved by his parents then he would have no real desire to destroy the earth when he was eleven and reached his destiny, and definitely _not _because it hurt something in Crowley’s chest when the boy was crying about missing his mom or wishing his dad could come play catch with him in the garden.

Harriet had told her son the night before that they could go to the zoo that day, if he just went to sleep right then and stopped trying to bother her. (This was particularly tempting, because the gardener had done a marvelous job at instilling a love of animals into the child, and his favorite books were generally ones with lots of different types of animals. Even Harriet had caught on to her son’s love of them and gifted him a large children’s encyclopedia at his last birthday. Well, she’d told Nanny Ashtoreth to go purchase it, but it was the thought that counted. It was one of the boy’s most treasured items.) The five-year-old had immediately lit up, not detecting the absentminded tone with which his mother spoke and believing her words in a way that only a young child could.

When Warlock had gotten up that morning, staying in his room until eight o’ clock because those were the rules Harriet had set out that she wasn’t to see him before then on any day, he had run to his mother’s room with talk of visiting lions and giraffes and monkeys on his lips.

But when Harriet had appeared in the hallway before Warlock had even gotten there, the boy had stopped in his tracks at the sight of her in a pink sundress, heels, and pearls, and it had only taken him a moment to understand. Yes, he was naïve enough to have believed her the night before, but he wasn’t stupid. She was dressed much too nicely for the zoo, and the heels were a dead giveaway that she had no intention to be walking around that day, much less among animals and food carts and suburban dads with fanny packs who reeked of sunscreen.

To her credit, she noticed Warlock as she was walking down the hall, but that was where the credit stopped building up. Without stopping or bending down to be at Warlock’s level (as Nanny did when she spoke with him), she said, “Oh, I’m sorry, sweetie – I have to go to a brunch with some of Daddy’s friends and their wives. We’ll try for the zoo another time, okay?”

And then she had been off in a flurry of pink, not even acknowledging Nanny Ashtoreth, who was standing at the end of the hallway and had watched everything that had just occurred.

Warlock had stood in the hallway a moment, and Crowley braced himself for the rage, for the earthquakes or fires or something to show how upset the Antichrist was. There was nothing he could do to stop it, so he just hoped that he had been a good enough nanny that Warlock didn’t want to set his sights on the demon, or on the angel who had probably just gotten to <strike>mangling</strike> tending to the rose bushes.

But Warlock had turned around then, tears in his eyes, and Crowley began to crouch down to accept the hug it appeared the boy was going to need, but then he just ran past the demon and back to his room, slamming the door decisively behind him.

***

Crowley allowed Warlock exactly six hundred and sixty-six seconds to cry alone in his bedroom, because he knew that that number was important to his infernal father so it was probably important to the son as well, and it just seemed a perfect number to round off of. After that eleven minutes and six seconds was over however, he rapped lightly on the door with his knuckles to let Warlock know he was coming in before opening it without waiting for a response. He was a demon, he wasn’t _polite_, and the only reason he knocked in the first place was because he didn’t want to startle the antichrist into discorporating him.

Warlock wasn’t crying anymore, but he still looked extraordinarily sad as he sat against the edge of his bed and brushed his fingers mournfully over the back of his stuffed lion. (Crowley had tried to get him attached to a better animal – a snake, perhaps – but the baby at the time was determined to like the lion the best. It wasn’t even a male lion – it had no mane. Harriet had mistaken it for a bear a few too many times because of it.)

“Why doesn’t Mommy like me?” Warlock asked when Crowley silently sat down beside him on the ground.

“I suspect it’s because she’s a terrible woman,” Crowley said blandly. What? He wasn’t going to _lie _to him – he didn’t want the antichrist remembering that his Nanny was a liar when the time for Armageddon came. That wouldn’t mean just an inconvenient discorporation – that was the path to definite destruction.

Warlock knew his nanny well enough that such a sentence was not out of the norm for her, and he didn’t say anything to try to argue with her. He thought privately that his nanny was probably right, though he didn’t want to say so out loud and make it true. Nanny always said he could control reality to his will, and he didn’t want to make his nanny’s words definitively true.

“Not to worry, Warlock,” Nanny said seriously. “One day, you will destroy every fool who’s ever wronged you and leave their corpses for the dogs.”

“You always say that, Nanny,” Warlock said glumly, and sniffed.

“Well, that just tells you it’s true!” Crowley posited. “Have you ever known _me _to lie to you, Warlock? No? I thought not. Trust every word I say. Now, come along. Brother Francis is probably wondering if we’ve forgotten about him, not having stopped by in so long.”

“We saw Brother Francis yesterday morning,” Warlock reminded her, but nonetheless rose to his feet.

“Yes, and he’s got just a terrible memory, so he probably won’t remember it anyway,” Crowley said in her usual no-nonsense tone. She raised an eyebrow at the way the boy raised both his arms in a clear directive that he wanted to be picked up. But this was a boy who would grow to be her master <strike>(though most days it felt like he already was, and it had nothing to do with him shaping reality but more to do with how she couldn’t deny the big brown eyes that looked up at her)</strike>, and so with only a small sigh, she acquiesced, leaning down to lift him under the armpits and settle him on her hip.

“I don’t think Brother Francis has an awful memory,” Warlock told him seriously as they made the trek out of the room and down the stairs. “He ‘membered that you like the tulips more than the roses. Mommy likes roses more.”

“That’s because your mother is a basic woman, lacking in imagination,” Crowley sniffed. “And I should hope that Brother Francis remembers I like tulips. I destroyed the Dutch economy because of it.” Completely by accident, but it was still very memorable in history, even now, so he took credit for the economy drop rather than the gorgeous fields that the Netherlands boasted now.

“Daddy talks about economy,” Warlock remembered, likely picking out the only thing he’d comprehended in the last bit of that sentence.

“Your earthly father talks about anything if he thinks it’s important-sounding enough to know two bits about,” Crowley said drolly as he opened the back door to go out into the garden. One of the maids glanced at them, likely hearing the comment, before quickly looking away and finding something Very Important that she had to attend to immediately. “Now, your infernal father on the other hand only talks about Important things. Always remember, Warlock – if it sounds Unimportant or Stupid, don’t say it. And don’t agree with anyone else who says it either, because you are Above such things. Or Below, as the case may be.”

“D’you think you an’ Brother Francis could take me to the zoo sometime?” Warlock asked suddenly, perking up hopefully and lifting his head to look up at Nanny. He didn’t appear to have absorbed anything his nanny had just said.

“Er…” Crowley floundered, grasping at something to say. Take Warlock to the zoo? With Aziraphale? Not only did that sound like a disaster of epic proportions, because it was one thing to work in the same household, but going out in _public _was just _asking _for trouble from either of their respective sides – but also, what was he supposed to do if he did lose the antichrist along the way? Bless it, but he may as well descend into Satan’s lair himself and ask for destruction right then and there.

Warlock sensed his indecision, and like the manipulative little fiend that he was (Crowley may or may not have shed a tear or two of pride behind his sunglasses, but he would never say), he continued to wheedle for the answer he wanted.

“I wouldn’t run away, promise!” he exclaimed. “I’ll stay right next to you an’ Brother Francis the whole time, and I’ll be so quiet, you can just pretend you’re on a date with him!”

Crowley would never admit to gaping at the child at the last words that escaped this infernal child’s mouth, but anyone who saw it would say that that’s exactly what he did.

“Why would you think I want to go on a _date _with Az – with Brother Francis?”

The insufferable child actually _rolled his eyes _at that. “It’s _obvious _you like each other,” he said frankly. “He gives you tulips, and sometimes you look out the window when you know he’s working in the garden, and your face goes all—” He made a quite exaggerated impression of what could only be described as _simpering_, which Crowley definitely did _not _do. “—and when he talks about you sometimes, he gets this different little smile like he’s remembering something nice, and…”

“Alright, alright,” Crowley quickly shushed the boy as they drew near enough to be within Aziraphale’s range of hearing. Wouldn’t do to have the angel hear Warlock’s observations of why he thought they were in love – he would think the demon was filling the poor child’s ears with harmful nonsense again.

“I’ll take you to the zoo,” he promised, and when Warlock’s face lit up with excitement, he went on severely, “_But_ only if you don’t tell Brother Francis anything you just told me. Keep it a secret, hm?”

“Now, what secrets could you _possibly_ want to keep from me, Ms. Ashtoreth?” Aziraphale asked in his ridiculous accent as he heard the last bit of Crowley’s words.

“Warlock’s not telling,” Crowley said promptly, and Warlock nodded vigorously in agreement before wiggling to be let down. Before Aziraphale could press further, Crowley abruptly changed the subject. “When’s your next day off? Day after tomorrow, right? Excellent, we’re taking Warlock to the zoo, then.”

“We’re gonna see _all _the animals!” Warlock cheered, before going on his knees to be closer to a worm he found wiggling in the dirt. Crowley was disappointed that he wasn’t taking the initiative to slice it in pieces with a sharp rock as a young antichrist should, but perhaps that was because the gardener was right there. Harming the worm might make the angel cry, after all<strike>, and even Crowley didn’t want to see that</strike>.

Aziraphale’s eyebrows were currently raised very high on his face. Crowley wondered absently if the angel had intentionally made his eyebrows look like caterpillars, in some kind of homage to living creatures. It seemed like a thing the angel would do.

“Are you sure that’s allowed, Ms. Ashtoreth?” he asked carefully.

Crowley knew that Aziraphale was talking about their sides finding out and the wisdom in that, but he feigned ignorance on the matter and simply said, “The Dowlings will be out day after tomorrow, and there’s nothing wrong with Warlock’s nanny taking him out for the day. If you happen to be along, well it’s your day off and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“_Please_, will you come, Brother Francis?” Warlock begged, looking up at the gardener beseechingly. Somehow, with the power that all children seemed to have to get filthy in just minutes, he already had dirt streaked across his cheek, lending to the whole innocent appeal. Crowley wondered if it was intentional, but he had also raised the boy long enough that he knew he got sticky and dirty with all manner of nonsense and couldn’t decide which option to chalk it up as.

Aziraphale was, of course, weaker than Nanny, and he agreed immediately to Warlock’s pleading. Crowley sniffed disdainfully, very carefully not thinking about how easy it had been for Warlock to convince _him_ to go, either.

***

“She is quite a terrible mother,” Crowley mused that night as he sat in Aziraphale’s cottage at the back of the property. He was nursing a bottle of wine, though whether it was the second or the sixth he couldn’t remember anymore. Didn’t matter. He’d sober up before leaving so he wouldn’t be hungover for the rather taxing job of corralling a baby antichrist.

“Crowley, she is trying her best,” Aziraphale chided, but Crowley knew it was halfhearted at best, more out of a habit to argue with Crowley now than anything else.

“Except when she’s not,” Crowley countered. “She tells him things, promises him things, and then doesn’t follow through on them. What am I supposed to do here, angel? _I _can’t parent him.”

Aziraphale chuckled a bit. “No, certainly not. What’s a demon – or an angel, for that matter – supposed to do with a child?”

“Well, he’s only _half_ human,” Crowley reminded him. “Other half is completely Satanic spawn. So maybe we wouldn’t screw it up _completely_.”

They were silent for a moment, staring at their bottle and glass respectively, and then they both looked up to meet each others’ eyes at the same time. It was a meaningful stare, one of suggestion, a _what if?_

A moment later, they both began laughing at the absurdity of it.

“As though we’d _actually _kidnap him,” Crowley chuckled, taking a swig off his bottle.

“Goodness, I’m an angel – angels don’t do these things,” Aziraphale chuckled, a trifle uneasily. “Kidnapping, _honestly_.”

***

“We should’ve kidnapped him years ago,” Crowley declared the next day as he patted a weeping Warlock’s back. “I don’t know what’s been keeping us, honestly. The Dowlings are clearly unfit…”

“Are you _mad_?” Aziraphale hissed in such a serpentine-like way that he could’ve been the one mistaken for the demon at that moment. “Don’t talk about these things in front of – of _him_!” he pointed his little shovel at Warlock, who was getting quite a bit of snot and tears on his nanny’s shoulder. “He’ll think we’re serious!”

“First of all, I _am _serious,” Crowley glared, partly because he wanted to impart the fact to Aziraphale that he _was_ in fact serious, but also because he was resisting the urge to miracle the snot away. Honestly, this was his best blouse, and his shoulder was soaked enough that he felt it through to the skin. “Secondly, he’s crying loudly enough he probably can’t hear what we’re saying, anyway. Thirdly, he probably doesn’t even know what kidnapping _means_.”

“We can’t do things like this, Cr – _Ashtoreth_,” Aziraphale told him sternly. “And we certainly shouldn’t be talking about it, where _anyone _could hear us.”

“Think about it, angel,” Crowley said. “Don’t think of it as kidnapping the antichrist. Think of it as kidnapping a normal boy.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel _better_?!”

“A normal boy, who is neglected by his parents and feels unloved by both,” Crowley amended. “His father got home this evening, and Warlock wanted to show him the picture that he drew yesterday with you. You know what Thaddeus said? He said that he didn’t have time for little boys’ projects, and he was needed back at work quickly before shoving his son – his _son _– aside to get to the kitchen.”

“He shoved him,” Aziraphale repeated flatly, eyes sparking.

Sensing weakness, Crowley pressed, “Perhaps it was not meant to be painful physically, but now we have a crying little boy on our hands who just wants his parents to love him. We can do that ourselves!”

“Are you sure you love the boy, though?” Aziraphale asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “I thought demons weren’t _capable _of love.”

“And I thought angels were supposed to love and help everyone, regardless of their age or the size of their footprint in the world, and yet here we are,” Crowley said snidely, hardly noticing that he had inadvertently confirmed that he loved the little hellspawn. <strike>If it convinced the angel that kidnapping the little Antichrist was in fact the best option, he didn’t particularly care what he admitted to.</strike>

“This isn’t just a footprint though, Crowley – this is…” Aziraphale glanced at the boy, and then lowered his voice to a whisper so that Warlock couldn’t hear – “This is the _antichrist_. He won’t make a footprint; he’ll reduce the earth to _mud_.”

“If we leave him here, that’s certainly how it’s going to go,” Crowley agreed, continuing to pat the Dread Lord Junior on his back, an attempt to soothe. He never knew if he was doing this comforting thing correctly, but what he had deduced from the five years of raising the little brat, sometimes humans just needed to be held. Sometimes it worked, but sometimes – like now – they just kept _crying_.

Suddenly, said Lord of Darkness pulled back, and the angel and demon both silenced as the boy looked at Crowley through teary eyes that had suddenly become pleading and determined.

“Will you please, kidnap me?” he requested in the same tone of voice he had asked to go to the zoo the day before.

“Of course not, Warlock,” Aziraphale said immediately. “You are very safe here. The security is flawless.”

“Don’t _lie _to him!” Crowley hissed, clutching the boy closer to him as though it would make him forget the words the angel had just spoken. “Do you want the Prince of This World to remember you as a _liar _at the time of the Apocalypse?”

“Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t even care!” Warlock went on insistently, paying no heed to his nanny’s nonsense words. They made no sense, anyway.

“Of course they would, Warlock,” Crowley said immediately. “After they noticed you were gone, anyway.” They weren’t the most observant of parents, indeed.

“Cr – _Ashtoreth_, don’t say such things!” Aziraphale scolded. “Warlock, you can’t really want to never see your parents again, do you? They do love you, after all. In their own way.”

“Do _not_,” Warlock pouted, crossing his arms in front of him. Aziraphale appeared quite at a loss at what to say or how to try reassuring the brunette. Served him right – he was using faulty logic, anyway. Faulty because it was just wildly untrue and they all knew it.

“What did I tell you about lying, angel?” Crowley said with a raised eyebrow, first at Aziraphale and then at Warlock, still seated in his lap. “He can detect lies, anyway – he’s the Father of them.”

Warlock nodded emphatically, understanding enough from his nanny’s comments to know generally what they were talking about. “Daddy tells Mommy he loves her all the time, but he always leaves her alone. And he says he’ll play catch with me when he gets back from his trip, but then he shoves me away when I come to him with my baseball. And Mommy says she’s in love with Daddy, but she kisses Mr. Richardson when no one’s looking, and you’re only s’posed to kiss the lips of people you _love_. I know when people are lyin’ to me.”

“Be that as it may,” Aziraphale said in a slightly perturbed voice at the fact that the five-year-old was so caught up in the gossip of the house, though slightly altered to a child’s understanding, “We can’t just kidnap you, Warlock. It’s not right.”

“Nanny says that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ don’t matter,” Warlock said, and looked at Crowley as though to test her on whether or not she would back him up or back up Brother Francis.

“He’s got us there,” Crowley said with a smirk. At Aziraphale’s flat look, his own expression became exasperated. “Oh, come on, angel! It’d be fun! I could replace him with a toad, and no one would even notice.”

“Yeah!” Warlock cheered, sensing weakness in the gardener. “And you an’ Nanny can be my _new _Mommy and Daddy, ‘cause mommies and daddies are s’posed to love each other so they love their kids more too, and I already love you guys, and you guys love me, and you love each other!”

Crowley and Aziraphale were both caught by a sudden coughing fit, and Warlock was curious to see the gardener’s normally ruddy cheeks flush even darker, and even Nanny’s cheeks pinked a bit. Adults were weird, he decided.

“Well, I think it’s just about your bed time,” Crowley said abruptly, rising to his feet with Warlock still on his hip. “You’ll need lots of energy to be able to go to the zoo tomorrow.”

“But _Nanny_,” Warlock whined, “I want you to kidnap me!”

“We’ll talk about it _after_ the zoo trip, and not a moment before,” Crowley said strictly, ignoring the sudden sharp look that Aziraphale sent his way. “Remember that this is our secret though, alright? Don’t tell anyone what we’ve been talking about, or it’s a definite ‘no’ to the kidnapping.”

“Okay, Nanny,” Warlock said sullenly, leaning limply into the woman’s side, resting his head on her angular shoulder.

“It’s _still _a definite ‘no’,” Aziraphale muttered to himself, but smiled when Warlock waved farewell to him. He didn’t like the look in Crowley’s expression, though.

***

“Warlock, come see the lions!” Crowley called to the boy standing beside the gardener a few feet away. Warlock was licking at a popsicle in his hand that was somehow miraculously (heh) not melting, despite the hot August weather and the fact that he’d been holding it for ten minutes now. Aziraphale had a sugary-looking monstrosity of an ice cream cone, which he’d tried to convince Warlock to get too, but the boy had wanted a popsicle more.

“Yes, those ‘re your favorite, aren’t they?” Aziraphale cajoled the sullen child. He’d been in a mood ever since he got up that morning, and even said that he didn’t want to go to the zoo. For some reason though that Warlock could not understand, Nanny had insisted on their going anyway, saying that he would regret it if he didn’t go. Not in a threatening way of course, because while Nanny was known to make subtle threats to just about everyone else, he never did with _him_. Warlock thought she was weird, because he knew that she didn’t like people – especially lots of people all gathered together in one place, crying and carrying on and generally making lots of noise. She said it sounded like Hell, making Warlock wonder how Nanny knew that. (Because she was obviously alive, so she _couldn’t_ go to Hell, at least not yet, though Warlock thought that maybe Nanny would like it there because it was dark and gloomy and she was generally a dark and gloomy person. He’d heard one of the cooks call her a “goth” before, which he didn’t know exactly what that meant but thought that it was a word that must fit Nanny perfectly, because it sounded right.)

“I don’t care ‘bout lions,” Warlock said with a frown, even as he followed the gardener over to where Nanny was standing in front of the lion enclosure.

“You can lie all you want to everyone else, but what did I say about lying to _me_?” Nanny said with an arched eyebrow.

“To not to.”

“That’s right, you impossible little fiend. Now come up here – I can lift you up so you can see them better.”

Although Warlock was excited to see a Real Live Lion, he still gave a deep, heaving sigh as though obeying his nanny was a great burden placed upon him, trudging forward to stand in front of her. She immediately lifted him up into the familiar place on her hip that he always sat at in this position, pointing a gloved hand across the embankment to the other side, where a male lion was sleeping beside its mate. As they watched, the male lion rolled onto its back, legs spreading like the oversized cat it really was.

“I think I’ll call him Sir Joystick,” Crowley said thoughtfully.

“_Ashtoreth_!”

“Lions aren’t like cars, Nanny – they don’t have joy sticks.”

“No, Warlock, you’re right – what was I thinking?” Nanny said, a laugh in her voice that Warlock didn’t understand. “Oh, calm down, Francis – he’s five. And am I wrong?”

Warlock didn’t really understand or particularly care what they were talking about, because his mind was on the fact that he had to go back home after the day was over, and have to go back home for many days after that because Nanny and Brother Francis for some reason refused to kidnap him. He wasn’t really excited to be at the zoo because of it, because he had hoped for a little bit that Nanny and Brother Francis would say yes, and now the hope wasn’t there anymore. They were going about everything like it was normal, and even though Nanny had said they could talk about it after the zoo trip, he knew enough to know that _this _“maybe” was almost definitely a “no.”

They stopped for lunch at a little cart selling corn dogs, and Warlock was gratified to see that Nanny remembered that he didn’t like ketchup and asked only for a strip of mustard on the food. He didn’t show his gratitude though, still upset with the two, and ate his corn dog in silence while Nanny and Brother Francis tried to draw him into conversation about the animals they had seen so far, eventually giving up and chatting with each other.

After lunch, they went to the monkey enclosures to see lots of different apes and chimpanzees. On the other side of the enclosure was a spot out in the grass where the gorillas could wander in the sun.

When they got outside, Nanny suddenly lifted him without warning, and though Warlock was startled because usually he was the one to ask to be picked up he still instinctively wrapped his legs around her hips to accommodate the usual position.

“Look at that one!” Nanny said, pointing at a random one in the distance that didn’t seem to be doing anything particularly special or different from the others, except that it was bigger than all of them. He didn’t really understand what was so exciting about that one. Or any of them, really.

Then Nanny pressed her lips close to Warlock’s ear, breath causing his hairs to move and slightly tickling him with the motion.

“Warlock,” Nanny said quietly, voice almost unheard in the sounds around them. “You’re not going home today, alright? Everything will be just fine.”

Warlock stared at Nanny when she pulled back a bit, not sure he understood correctly but hope blooming in his chest nonetheless. A moment later, he pressed his own lips to Nanny’s ear (the one with the cool snake tattoo next to it), because that’s how secrets were supposed to be told.

“Are you an’ Brother Francis gonna kidnap me?” he whispered loudly.

“I prefer to call it surprise adoption,” Nanny said smoothly with a wink he could see through the dark glasses.

Warlock turned that over in his head, and a moment later he positively beamed as he understood that he was correct. He looked over at Brother Francis, who was humming quietly to himself and glancing around casually – but maybe not so casually. Miraculously, no one else was around the fence that showed the gorillas across the grassy embankment. Warlock wondered if Nanny or Brother Francis was magic, to be able to make sure everyone left them alone.

“I can keep a secret,” Warlock said proudly. “I won’t tell anyone, _ever_.”

“Good,” Nanny said briskly in her usual no-nonsense tone, though Warlock thought her eyes maybe looked a little softer than normal. “Because we’re going to need your help with this, little hellspawn.”

Warlock didn’t know what kind of help Nanny and Brother Francis would need from him – they were _adults_, after all, and he was just a kid – but he was more than willing to do whatever his new mommy and daddy wanted of him.

The rest of the zoo trip was a lot more fun, too.

***

True to his word, Crowley replaced Warlock Dowling with a toad. He used a few miracles to change his appearance and make him able to grow with Warlock’s DNA, so he would appear to grow up totally normal, and Aziraphale contributed with his own miracles of giving him Warlock’s surface memories. Wouldn’t do to have a boy suddenly in the house with only the memories of a toad, after all. _That _might be too much for someone not to notice.

Crowley and Aziraphale quit their jobs in the same week, despite Harriet’s pleas that she would give both of them raises if they stayed on. The staff of the Dowling household were their usual gossipy selves, and drew the conclusion that the two of them had eloped. They largely ignored the toad-turned-five-year-old, as they always had, and the next nanny (because Harriet still wasn’t going to raise her son – he was much too young for her to relate to yet) didn’t care enough to notice that the boy was a bit odd and croaked when stressed or annoyed, or sometimes looked like he was hopping rather than walking. Rich people were eccentric, after all – no need to be alarmed.

The boy once known as Warlock Dowling became Warlock Crowley-Fell, though he wouldn’t realize for another few months where exactly his new parents had pulled the names from. He was a quite normal boy, aside from being lullabied to sleep with strange versions of “The Grand Old Duke of York” or being instructed to love spiders rather than shriek and squish them with the nearest shoe, as most were wont to do.

He lived out in the country, in a little town called Tadfield, because his parents always said that it was the “least likely place they would go looking for him”.

He wasn’t ever sure if they were talking about his old parents or someone else.

He was an odd boy, to be certain, but none of the town members blamed him. He _would _turn out odd, with parents like that. Not because they were gay, of course. But there was just something about that Mr. Crowley and Mr. Fell that was strange. A certain Arthur Young thought he might have heard the seven-year-old call his father (who looked vaguely familiar every time the man saw him, but he just couldn’t quite put his finger on it) “Nanny” once, which was quite odd, but he didn’t make a habit of judging other people and dismissed it. Besides, Warlock was such a nice boy – a bit of a brat sometimes but then so was his own son. They would certainly grow out of it, as most boys did.

It wasn’t as though either of them were the antichrist, after all.

Warlock was quite happy in this new life, too. He continued to enjoy digging around in the garden with Brother Francis – whom he had to remember to call “Pops” in front of other people – and took the news that Nanny was sometimes a man with the frank understanding that came from growing up around the unusual. Some things were just explained by the fact that “it’s Nanny”, and that was that.

On his eleventh birthday, Nanny – er, Dad, that is – and Pops seemed to be expecting something from him all day. They celebrated his birthday as usual, though they couldn’t help seeming a bit…on edge. Warlock dismissed it, because that was just his parents for you, always acting odd, and asked if he could go play with Adam and Them in the woods.

“Be back before dark,” Dad had called, glancing at Pops. “And if you see a dog, _don’t_ name it!” Warlock sighed and rolled his eyes, hopping on his bike and riding away to meet with his friends.

A couple of hours later, he came back to the house, suspicions once again aroused that his dads were psychic, but not particularly good at it, because things always happened _around _him when they expected it to happen _to _him.

“Dad, Pops!” Warlock called as he stepped inside the house. The evening sun set everything inside the house in a soft yellow glow. It was familiarly calming – it felt like home.

“Did a dog come to you?” was the first thing that Dad demanded when he came into the living room, where Pops was reading a book in his recliner and the sun made it look like his head was surrounded by a halo.

“_No_,” Warlock huffed. “Mr. Young got _Adam _a dog, though. Well, he let him keep it, anyway. It was just running around in the forest.”

“Adam got a dog,” Dad repeated. Pops closed his book and blinked at Warlock in confusion, like things just weren’t quite computing in his head.

Warlock nodded impatiently. “Uh-huh. An’ it’s small enough that it’s not going to mess up their house, but he has to wash it first before it’s allowed in because it smells like poo. He named it _Dog_, though. That’s a _boring _name.”

Dad and Pops shared a very significant look with each other. Warlock rolled his eyes. They were always doing that, as though Warlock didn’t know that they were totally in love with each other, even though he’d never seen them kiss. Still, he knew when people were lying, and he knew that his parents loved each other.

“Warlock,” Dad said, turning his serpentine gaze to him. “We need to have a little talk.”

And then it all came out, that his parents were actually and angel and a demon (he really couldn’t even pretend to be surprised at that, because it _made sense_) and they had come to the Dowling house to raise him to stop Armageddon, which was the end of the world, which they had thought Warlock would start, but now it looked like maybe his friend Adam was the _actual _antichrist, and they would probably need his help to stop Armageddon anyway, and in the end he ended up being there on the American air base and did indeed help in stopping it, and when his dads were taken by Heaven and Hell to be put on trial he was safely ensconced in the Young household in a surprise sleepover to keep him safe and a secret from both sides, and Warlock thought it was a bit weird to know that one of his best friend’s parents were also his parents, but also not really his parents because Crowley and Aziraphale had raised him for much longer and he kept everything a secret from the Youngs, anyway, and when all was said and done he continued to grow up in Tadfield with an angel and a demon as his parents, and he may have finally (with the help of Them) gotten the two of them to officially get together, and a normal fairy tale book would call it a perfectly nice “Happily Ever After”.

But that’s another story.

**Author's Note:**

> The ending turned out more specific than I wanted it to, but I couldn't find a way to make the ending vague without it seeming weirdly abrupt. So...*throws jazz hands*...enjoy this bit about how I saw things maybe going with the turn I took.
> 
> Find me on [ Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hashtagleh), where I scream about many random and varied things. :)


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